Predicting Kitten Color

[mehyabbers]

I've been doing research on kitten colors and it's so interesting to hear about the possibilities and impossibilites!

I was trying to find a kitten calculator to predict colors but didn't have much luck. Anyone wanna take a whack at what color kittens my cat will have?

Cross is semi short torbie (pictured below) x long hair all black male.

This is a pregnant feral I caught recently. Her and her kittens will be fixed before they leave my care.

May be a little hard to tell from the photo but she is mostly a grey/brown tabby with small patches of orange/red. Tiny bit of white on her muzzle.

 

[lutece]

Torbie female x Solid black male:

We know for sure that you could get:
- Brown tabby males or females
- Red tabby males
- Torbie females

If the female is carrying solid, you could also get:
- Black males or females
- Tortoiseshell females

Depending on whether the female is carrying longhair, you might get longhaired kittens as well.

Other recessive colors (blue, pointed, etc.) are also possible if both parents happen to carry these recessive genes.

 

[mehyabbers]

Cool thanks so much for the input!

 

[Willowy]

She could have been bred by another male or even multiple males. So it could be a real surprise!

 

[lutece]

She could have been bred by another male or even multiple males. So it could be a real surprise!

Good point!

 

[Kieka]

Don't forget about the recessive pointed gene. That can pop up out of nowhere sometimes.

 

[mehyabbers]

Here's a pic of her last litter (unknown father). The orange and tabby are male and the one with white is female. Curious where the white came from assuming it's the same father. The kitten in my icon is also her kitten. She was the first one I caught.

 

[lutece]

The white spotting gene is dominant, so one of the parents of the previous litter must have had white spotting. I do not see white spotting on the mother (the small white areas on her muzzle appear to me to be part of the tabby pattern). So unless she has a white patch on her belly or somewhere else that I can't see in the picture, I expect there is a male in the neighborhood that has some white on him.

 

[mehyabbers]

Gotcha! So it would be impossible or unlikely to have any white on the kittens with a solid black father?

She doesn't have any white really. Just the peachy color on her muzzle.

 

[lutece]

I wouldn't say impossible since that's a very strong word... but close to impossible! White spotting is dominant, and the white markings on the two kittens (in your avatar and the other kitten picture) look like typical white markings caused by one copy of the white spotting gene. So, either the solid black male has white spotting hiding on his underside somewhere that you didn't notice, or there was a different male cat involved.